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I thought the opponents of resigning players scored maximum points or something.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
This is that 'submarining' thing that's getting talked about in the Tournament sub-forum, isn't it? It's cropped up on a few 40k websites as well.

It should be an easy fix. If you walk away from a game, you are conceding. If you are conceding, you net 0 points.

If this was a small tournament the DE player could benefit by being placed against a weaker opponent. If it is big enough to have multiple people with no losses then the score will matter.

Yeah, the issue with awarding max points to the player who has been on the end of this, is this can then be used as another tactic, and game fixing can become a problem, not that prize money is high enough for someone to pay to fix but hell, weird stuff happens.

The person who concedes needs to have a harsh punishment. 0 points, and potentially a deduction in points also. I'd go as far as disqualifying maybe though, purely because some people who already know they aren't going to place may not care about getting zero points any more (e.g. a person who is their to win/place, not participate, so once they know they have no chance of achieving their goals, they may throw the towel in). Future bans from events also is a possibility, some may argue this is too far though...

There's loads of ways you can go about it anyway, but mainly you need to find the right way to totally discourage people doing it basically, and awarding the other player max points is not it due to the above where that can be open to abuse also.

If you concede without your opponents consent or don't consent to your opponent conceding in the event of an emergency you should be banned from the current and any future local events. You cannot tell me that the only flaw these people have is that they will tactically concede to ruin the standing of their opponent.

If you don't want to play against Drukhari or AdMech meanies don't play competitive 40k.

Some things GW cannot prepare for and TOs should implement house rules to ensure their tournaments don't just become a popularity contest by way of concession to give max points to the winner or invalid data next week after Space Wolves lose ObSec on everything except Troops or 25 point Land Raider Redeemers get spammed.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

It should be an easy fix. If you walk away from a game, you are conceding. If you are conceding, you net 0 points.

^This.

As long as you use battle points, you'll have problems. Nipping one in the bud opens up another one. It's just a terrible way to determine standings. There's a reason more serious competitive games don't use it, and a reason why they have mostly transitioned to opponent win % as their tiebreaker. It's just better - less prone to manipulation, and the best thing of all about it is that it fosters a cooperative rather than cutthroat approach. In an opponent wins % tournament, instead of being encouraged to seal-club newer players, top tournament players are instead encouraged to use the game as a teaching experience, because doing so will help their opponent do better in their future games, which will help the top player's tiebreaker. It cannot be overstated how much this changes the competitive dynamic. In a OW% tournament, you can literally just call the game on T2-3 when it's clear who is going to win, and then use the remainder of your time to go back and replay the first couple turns, showing your opponent what they could have done to make things a better game. Or you can just start playing casually once you've got the victory, giving them a fun time for the rest of the game. It's all up to you, because the system doesn't force you to do anything, and the only thing it encourages you to do is teach your opponent to play better. It's night and day. I don't understand why 40k players are so resistant. Ok, I do understand - people don't want to try something new. But this is one of those cases where almost everyone enjoys the OW% system better if they give it a chance.

Agree, it seems like more of an issue with flawed tournament systems than sportsmanship.

The ranking system needs to properly account for concessions so people can not use them to hurt/help players.

 Nurglitch wrote:
I thought the opponents of resigning players scored maximum points or something.

Yeah. This is the normal solution this problem?

It does potentially result in abuse the other way - but its been the standard at most tournaments I've been to. With significant moral pressure to not just quit - or if you must, coming up with some "quick turn" calculation for how the points would have gone for the winning player.

Karol wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Karol wrote:
Yep. Seen it done, often enough to consider it being a regular thing. It is like your trainer ask you to hurt a guy from another school, when they know you will not rank anyway. Some people don't like it, but playing the rules is as important as playing the game.

Its not playing the rules, its being a dick.

you gain nothing from preventing others from achieving better results.

Imagine thinking that voluntarily hurting someone should be normal, absolutely flying rodent gak insane opinion.

I think, the english language is full of terms of describing it. Take the knee, play the clock. For football fans there is the good old Italian cantenacio. It is a normal thing to do in sports, And you gain everything. First you make their chance to win lower. Second it maybe part of a bigger team tactic, if you came with other people from your area. It maybe part of trying to pre build opponent to specific people.

Ask someone playing american football or regular football, or basketball etc what a tactical foul is. And that is before any scholar ships, sponsorships etc get involved. If someone being out of the team means you get a good life as a professional and get scouted you definitly will think about it. And when the sport is big and involved milions, and on top of that betting, then sky is the limit to what people are willing to do.

yeah and the principal english word for describing it is Being an donkey-cave. don't try to justify your sociopathy kid

I've been to only a handful of tournaments, as I'm not big on that sort of environment in general, I prefer 'competitive' games at home/local...

But every one I've got to, when there's been a concession on one side, the other person either helps me work out the max possible points to get after conceding, and I've done the same in return. I suppose I'm glad that my exposure to that caliber of competition has been so limited, since it comes across as very unsportsmanlike to use it to deny points.

However. There's rules in the core rules for how to deal with it. This was a case of a person conceeding, refusing to help, and the 'winner' not knowing their rules.

yukishiro1 wrote:
As long as you use battle points, you'll have problems. Nipping one in the bud opens up another one. It's just a terrible way to determine standings. There's a reason more serious competitive games don't use it, and a reason why they have mostly transitioned to opponent win % as their tiebreaker. It's just better - less prone to manipulation, and the best thing of all about it is that it fosters a cooperative rather than cutthroat approach. In an opponent wins % tournament, instead of being encouraged to seal-club newer players, top tournament players are instead encouraged to use the game as a teaching experience, because doing so will help their opponent do better in their future games, which will help the top player's tiebreaker. It cannot be overstated how much this changes the competitive dynamic. In a OW% tournament, you can literally just call the game on T2-3 when it's clear who is going to win, and then use the remainder of your time to go back and replay the first couple turns, showing your opponent what they could have done to make things a better game. Or you can just start playing casually once you've got the victory, giving them a fun time for the rest of the game. It's all up to you, because the system doesn't force you to do anything, and the only thing it encourages you to do is teach your opponent to play better. It's night and day. I don't understand why 40k players are so resistant. Ok, I do understand - people don't want to try something new. But this is one of those cases where almost everyone enjoys the OW% system better if they give it a chance.

The current set up was to allow better players to get matched together letting the more casual players have a better experience on bottom tables I thought?

Your thing doesn't sound bad, but I can see some competitive types getting aggravated.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
As long as you use battle points, you'll have problems. Nipping one in the bud opens up another one. It's just a terrible way to determine standings. There's a reason more serious competitive games don't use it, and a reason why they have mostly transitioned to opponent win % as their tiebreaker. It's just better - less prone to manipulation, and the best thing of all about it is that it fosters a cooperative rather than cutthroat approach. In an opponent wins % tournament, instead of being encouraged to seal-club newer players, top tournament players are instead encouraged to use the game as a teaching experience, because doing so will help their opponent do better in their future games, which will help the top player's tiebreaker. It cannot be overstated how much this changes the competitive dynamic. In a OW% tournament, you can literally just call the game on T2-3 when it's clear who is going to win, and then use the remainder of your time to go back and replay the first couple turns, showing your opponent what they could have done to make things a better game. Or you can just start playing casually once you've got the victory, giving them a fun time for the rest of the game. It's all up to you, because the system doesn't force you to do anything, and the only thing it encourages you to do is teach your opponent to play better. It's night and day. I don't understand why 40k players are so resistant. Ok, I do understand - people don't want to try something new. But this is one of those cases where almost everyone enjoys the OW% system better if they give it a chance.

The current set up was to allow better players to get matched together letting the more casual players have a better experience on bottom tables I thought?

Your thing doesn't sound bad, but I can see some competitive types getting aggravated.

You don't have to use the same metric for ranking and match making.

BrianDavion 800448 11202521 wrote:

yeah and the principal english word for describing it is Being an donkey-cave. don't try to justify your sociopathy kid

It is a regular behaviour durning sports. It is a sociopathic as breathing. Go ask someone who played professional or semi professional sports or even played at school or any trainer. It is not being an donkey-cave. Being an donkey-cave in sports is something like. You win or are winning 5 to 1, and then just before the match ends you kick the other dude in the throat. Because you really don't like him, for what ever reason. And guess what happens then? The KO does with the damage throat becomes the olympic champion and the guy with the more points gets disqualified. And now has problem with any organisation that does beting .

 Jidmah wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
As long as you use battle points, you'll have problems. Nipping one in the bud opens up another one. It's just a terrible way to determine standings. There's a reason more serious competitive games don't use it, and a reason why they have mostly transitioned to opponent win % as their tiebreaker. It's just better - less prone to manipulation, and the best thing of all about it is that it fosters a cooperative rather than cutthroat approach. In an opponent wins % tournament, instead of being encouraged to seal-club newer players, top tournament players are instead encouraged to use the game as a teaching experience, because doing so will help their opponent do better in their future games, which will help the top player's tiebreaker. It cannot be overstated how much this changes the competitive dynamic. In a OW% tournament, you can literally just call the game on T2-3 when it's clear who is going to win, and then use the remainder of your time to go back and replay the first couple turns, showing your opponent what they could have done to make things a better game. Or you can just start playing casually once you've got the victory, giving them a fun time for the rest of the game. It's all up to you, because the system doesn't force you to do anything, and the only thing it encourages you to do is teach your opponent to play better. It's night and day. I don't understand why 40k players are so resistant. Ok, I do understand - people don't want to try something new. But this is one of those cases where almost everyone enjoys the OW% system better if they give it a chance.

The current set up was to allow better players to get matched together letting the more casual players have a better experience on bottom tables I thought?

Your thing doesn't sound bad, but I can see some competitive types getting aggravated.

You don't have to use the same metric for ranking and match making.

Yep, you can still use swiss pairings to determine matches if you want to - I'm not convinced it's the best, but that's not the problem we're discussing here. We're discussing what tiebreaker mechanism to use when people finish with an identical W-L-T record. I mean yes, it wouldn't make sense to use battle points to determine swiss pairings - but that is a terrible thing to do, even if you are using battle points for tiebreakers. You should never, ever be using battle points to determine swiss pairings, it should be just wins all go into a pool and losses all go into a pool. Using battle points is an absolute disaster in terms of what sort of behavior it rewards.

OW% doesn't work great for 3-game tournaments because there isn't enough time to develop meaningful OW% stats, but at anything 5 games or larger, it is simply objectively better than battle points. It isn't perfect, but it's much better. I am sure that the vast majority of 40k tournament players would embrace the system if they gave it a try even once, it is so obviously better a system.

Karol wrote:
It is a regular behaviour durning sports. It is a sociopathic as breathing. Go ask someone who played professional or semi professional sports or even played at school or any trainer. It is not being an donkey-cave. Being an donkey-cave in sports is something like. You win or are winning 5 to 1, and then just before the match ends you kick the other dude in the throat. Because you really don't like him, for what ever reason. And guess what happens then? The KO does with the damage throat becomes the olympic champion and the guy with the more points gets disqualified. And now has problem with any organisation that does beting .

You just described assault/battery, which is a crime. Not only would say player be sent off for that game but they would likely be disqualified from that and probably future tournaments, their team might be disqualified, the team might get fined and criminal proceedings would be opened against the player for committing a serious crime.
Your earlier example of getting your coach to hurt another player to help you win is also a crime. All you are describing is crimes.

Karol wrote:

BrianDavion 800448 11202521 wrote:

yeah and the principal english word for describing it is Being an donkey-cave. don't try to justify your sociopathy kid

It is a regular behaviour durning sports. It is a sociopathic as breathing. Go ask someone who played professional or semi professional sports or even played at school or any trainer. It is not being an donkey-cave. Being an donkey-cave in sports is something like. You win or are winning 5 to 1, and then just before the match ends you kick the other dude in the throat. Because you really don't like him, for what ever reason. And guess what happens then? The KO does with the damage throat becomes the olympic champion and the guy with the more points gets disqualified. And now has problem with any organisation that does beting .

Karol you understand that 40k is not a professional sport or the Olimpycs where national honor is at the stake (even in those cases this sort of "conceding in bad faith" attitude is unethical) its just a naive game play for the entertainment of gentlemen/women?

Are you troling or are you really a sociopath?

PD: Sorry, I see you are Polish... You are not troling... Why is that so many Polish guys just dont understand how to play wargames and treat their fellowgamers as if the were the enemy during WWII?

Strength of schedule tiebreakers are really common in the sports world. They don't completely fix the issue of fraud teams coasting through on easy schedules but it does mitigate it, and it's definitely better than basing tiebreakers on scoring.

As for Karol's insanity, I don't know what sort of feth gak is happening over in Europe but here in America the idea of deliberately injuring an opponent is tied to Bountygate, which everyone agrees was a very bad thing that people rightfully lose their jobs for.

It's not Europe. It's just Karol.

Karol is not actually living in Poland, he's from the Eye of Terror.

Although I am always amused reading about these ridiculous wrestling and cutt throat competetiveness analogies, a scottish teammate of mine (I play rugby in germany) once told me, that you wouldnt dare to tape your knee in scotland because the other guys would then know what to target

I honestly can't think of a single competitive sporting event that isn't ROCKED by at least one major cheating scandle per year, and that includes E-sports and non athletic games like MTG or 40k.

Just this month there was an article in Auspex Tactics about how intentionally scoring low or in the 80s-90s just to get a weaker pairing in the next round. MTG is constantly banning their top players for deck manipulation or flagrant violations. It's the nature of the game. There is zero way to fix this.

Well, as previously mentioned, the GT Mission book detailing how to play tourneys explicitly covers this. If tourney organizers are not using it, then ask the tourney organizer how to handle.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
There is zero way to fix this.

This is a defeatist attitude. There is zero way to come up with a scoring system that it is impossible to manipulate, that's true. However, there are many easy ways to come up with a system a lot better than the one 40k uses. It's not a coincidence that strength of schedule is used in almost all competitive games now aside from GW games. It's simply better.

When your system is as bad as the one competitive 40k uses, it is actually an opportunity, because there are a ton of easy gains you can make before you start getting to having to make hard choices.

Is there like a technical document that exists out there that one could use to explain and convince TOs?

Not sure exactly what a "technical document" means. The post I linked is a very thorough and balanced explanation of why it works better, while acknowledging its limitations. Magic went through this years ago, there might be some stuff out there from their experience I guess.

40k's just behind the times here, there's not a whole lot more to it. The fact that pretty much everyone uses SoS now isn't some big conspiracy where everyone except GW is doing it wrong, it's that GW is still stuck in the stone age and TOs have been reluctant to strike out on their own, especially with GW having reasserted control over the competitive game with the release of 9th.

I cannot believe Brandt hasn't already been bombarded with SoS-based proposals. That GW hasn't yet embraced it is presumably due to resistance from within the company; I have no idea whether that resistance is Brandt himself, or someone higher up the chain.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Is there like a technical document that exists out there that one could use to explain and convince TOs?

The Strength of Schedule system is already in use in lots of other games, specifically to avoid these sort of problems. It's not really a case of needing a technical document, it's more about getting 40k TOs to change and that seems to be a difficult thing for them to do.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Not sure exactly what a "technical document" means. The post I linked is a very thorough and balanced explanation of why it works better, while acknowledging its limitations. Magic went through this years ago, there might be some stuff out there from their experience I guess.

40k's just behind the times here, there's not a whole lot more to it. The fact that pretty much everyone uses SoS now isn't some big conspiracy where everyone except GW is doing it wrong, it's that GW is still stuck in the stone age and TOs have been reluctant to strike out on their own, especially with GW having reasserted control over the competitive game with the release of 9th.

I cannot believe Brandt hasn't already been bombarded with SoS-based proposals. That GW hasn't yet embraced it is presumably due to resistance from within the company; I have no idea whether that resistance is Brandt himself, or someone higher up the chain.

Ok so to be sure I have everything right - it would be a swiss style tournament, but the pairings would be based on the win percentages of your opponent. So, how do you pair in rounds 1 and 2?

Sorry for my ignorance. I've read lots of posts in passing talking about all this, but never really committed any brain cells to it.

Vatsetis wrote:
Ohh the delights of "competitive" 40k... They never get old

Same thought crossed my mind.

Solution: DON'T visit tournaments, goddamit!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Strength of schedule tiebreakers are really common in the sports world. They don't completely fix the issue of fraud teams coasting through on easy schedules but it does mitigate it, and it's definitely better than basing tiebreakers on scoring.

As for Karol's insanity, I don't know what sort of feth gak is happening over in Europe but here in America the idea of deliberately injuring an opponent is tied to Bountygate, which everyone agrees was a very bad thing that people rightfully lose their jobs for.

Bountygate?! Was that the incident where an American Football defensive coach would hand out bounties of opposing players to be crippled? Lol, this should be the norm in Blood Bowl.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Ok so to be sure I have everything right - it would be a swiss style tournament, but the pairings would be based on the win percentages of your opponent. So, how do you pair in rounds 1 and 2?

Sorry for my ignorance. I've read lots of posts in passing talking about all this, but never really committed any brain cells to it.

You could do it different ways, but no, my suggestion would be:

1. Pairings are swiss based solely on win/loss. I.e. if you have a 32 person tournament, round 1 the pairings are completely random (just like they are now). From then on you pair solely based on W-L ratios, with random selection for everyone in the same bracket. I.e. after 3 rounds you pair the 3-0s off against each other, the 2-1s against each other, the 1-2s against each other, and the 0-3s against each other. If ties or drops or anything else causes weirdness you just randomly select who gets bumped up or down a bracket.

2. Tiebreakers for tournament rankings are based on opponent win % to break ties among people with identical W-L ratios. So if one player goes 5-0, and then three players go 4-1, the 5-0 player wins the tournament, and places 2 through 4 are determined through opponent win %.

If you wanted to, you could incorporate OW% into the pairings too from round 3, but I don't think there's any real advantage or reason to do so personally. I don't see any reason to differentiate among people with identical W-L ratios until you get to the final rankings.

The fundamental insight here is that your margin of victory doesn't mean your win is worth more; instead, a hard-fought victory over a better opponent is worth more than a 100-0 blowout against a noob if it comes to picking between the two for otherwise identical W-L records. This system doesn't give the #2 slot to the guy who won 100-0 in all his games aside from his loss over the guy who won 55-54 in all his games aside from his loss. Instead, it looks at the strength of each guy's opponents, and gives the #2 slot to the guy who played opponents who did better in the tournament. This has a wide range of implications for how people approach their games, and they're nearly all positive when compared to using battle points. The post I linked on reddit is worth reading on this, it explains it better than I have and in much more detail.

Ahh. I get it now. Thanks!